Several technologies are available for discovering devices and web services, including Salutation, E-Speak, Jini, and Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI). These technologies are often employed by Internet services, clients that request Internet services, and brokers to help coordinate interaction between an Internet service and a client. Salutation and E-Speak rely on a proprietary transport that funnels through a broker, requiring clients and services to be built with respective products such that both use an agreed protocol. Jini provides a Java object to clients to interact with a service, requiring the Java object to interact with another Java object alone, whether it is a Java client or a Java wrapper. The protocol used between the Java object and the service is determined by the service. UDDI provides a client with Web Service Description Language (WSDL) and the client develops a communications code based on methods and parameters disclosed by the WSDL.
Currently employed technologies utilize a service, a broker and a communications proxy for clients to interact with an Internet service, but they fail to provide a method, a required Application Program Interface (API) and implementations for clients to specify a desired application-level transport protocol and a language/component technology. With current technologies, a client has no ability to specify a protocol that makes the most sense for the client. As an example of a conventional method, Jini, a server centric model, provides a Java object to clients to interact with a service. There is no negotiation between the service and the client for type of proxy. The protocol used between the Java object and the service is determined by the service.